Assembly Tips for the IKEA BESTÅ System

Ah yes, thanks for the info! Then the problem is already solved, wonderful.

Hello everyone,

I am currently working on my Besta wall and struggling with cable management. This is the first time in my Ikea-shaped life that something was really impractically designed. The cables inevitably all have to be "built in" during assembly. Retrofitting is accordingly complicated, so it’s better to have an extra HDMI cable and such as a reserve. Once the cables are at the bottom, you come to the next problem, since you definitely have to saw the cabinet underneath. Unfortunately, the space there does not get any bigger compared to the already limited pass-through next to the Framsta rails, because the cabinet has the mounting screw for the side panel/top exactly at this point. So you can only saw in from above and cannot saw off a piece of the side panel. Therefore, I will saw out a wider piece along the FRAMSTA rail so that the cable ends fit through, and in the end, there will be "almost" as much space in the BESTA cabinet as there is on the edge of the FRAMSTA rails – it should just barely work.

I say "should" because I currently had to put a construction stop in place. Except for one cable, all my cables are too short. I need almost 2m to the foot of the panel, so the cables all have to be 2.5m to 3m long. Therefore, yesterday I went cable hunting on eBay. As mentioned above, I recommend everyone to plan reserves, because later you practically have to dismantle the entire cabinet wall to make changes. I will also install LED lighting behind the glass panels. If the whole thing looks like I imagine it in the end, the effort was still worth it^^ Hopefully all the cables arrive quickly, I know my luck that all but one are in the mailbox on Wednesday and I still can’t continue. It’s really great to have a living room full of moving boxes and no cabinet wall. When it progresses, I will gladly post photos of the cable management and drilling in the cabinet.

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And by the way, a tip for your cabinet planning and search: The kids’ series Stuva is identical to BESTA, only the furniture comes in different sizes or depths. I have STUVA in the children’s room and needed a narrow wall shelf over the changing table, so I bought a BESTA shelf and that's how I noticed it. Doors are compatible without any problems, all the drillings are identical, material as well. It’s the same furniture line, just with a different name and different sizes.

so this TV wall is slowly driving me crazy.

All ordered cables are here - except one. Great, because I can't build more than the bottom row of cabinets until then... Otherwise, my "cable tree" is now complete except for one cable, and space looks very tight. Planned are: TV power (still missing), TV satellite, TV DVB-T, TV network, 2x HDMI, component cable (Wii), Wii sensor bar, SCART extension (spare), and RCA for TV audio output. All in all, 10 cables.

In addition, there is the DIODER LED strip to illuminate the glass panels from behind. The plan was 2 such small adhesive strips per panel, but maybe I'll put 3 in; luckily, that can still be done later without too much effort. BUT: The connection cable of the DIODER LED strips is also too short! In the furniture store, they illuminate entire walls full of these panels with them, and indeed you can only go 2 panels up if you want to place the control unit in the cabinet below. Today I therefore cut off the plugs on one side of 2 cables each twice and re-pressed the cables, put heat shrink tubing over it, and now from 2 packages of DIODER with originally 8x 1m connection cables I have at least 2x 2m and 2x 1m, that should be enough since the connection cables end almost right after the "tube" of the FRAMSTA panels...

For the BESTA cabinet under the bottom FRAMSTA panel, into which the cables are to be fed, I naturally had to cut out a piece of the top panel. I left the back panel completely out, since the plugs are on the wall there. Thus, only a rectangular piece exactly under the cable passages had to be cut from the back. The plan sounded great, nothing should be visible and the screws holding the BESTA cabinet remain untouched. The implementation disappoints, because at the height of the cable passage the "solid" zone of the wood ends and the honeycomb cardboard filling begins. As soon as you saw there, a bit of the then very thin paint layer inevitably breaks off. I actually got lucky, only about 2x3mm of it is later visible. I sealed the inner cut surface, especially towards the honeycomb filling, with acrylic to prevent tenants from moving in there. The small paint chipping also became nearly invisible again with the white acrylic. If you want to 100% prevent sawing into the honeycomb area, you should cautiously saw only so deeply from the back into the top panel that you can only use the rear cable guide of the FRAMSTA panel. If space is not enough like in my case, tape everything firmly and saw as carefully as possible!

As soon as the last cable finally arrives, it will start and I have to battle the cables to get them all in there^^

no longer feeling like waiting for the cable, today I got myself another one. Then it started and it stays that way, the BESTA-FRAMSTA combination is the first and so far only impractical thing from IKEA, at least until it is assembled^^

In the FRAMSTA wall, you can theoretically also route the cables down the middle, but they still all have to go under the small column on the left or right. I routed 5 of my total 10 cables through the 2nd panel and the 3rd panel. Hung the TV as a test, aligned the cable length accordingly and fixed it somewhere in the FRAMSTA wall (e.g. with adhesive tape). Then the TV can be taken down again for the rest of the assembly.

The Inreda lighting is so unsuitable for the panel wall, I find it quite cheeky that it is advertised for that. As soon as you connect the LED strips with the spacer connector, it looks really bad from the front because gaps appear. If you put 2 or 3 directly next to each other, they are too short to shine past the side of the TV. 4 pieces connected directly together just fit with a bit of squeezing. If they were 1cm shorter in total, it wouldn’t be a problem anymore. But at least then you have good illumination of the panels. Only you theoretically need one pack per panel, that gets expensive! I have now glued 4 strips above the TV and 4 under the TV into the panel, looks great from the front, only when you look at it from the side, you notice that the middle panel is unlit. Above the TV comes a glass shelf and I will also light the top panel, but I have to buy INREDA again

All in all, it fit incredibly tight, it’s a huge fiddling and not like usual IKEA-easy to assemble. A bit deceiving, too, how these things light up in the showroom, because that already fails due to the short INREDA cables... annoying!

But as soon as it is screwed together and to the wall, it holds rock solid and looks great. Over time you will forget the trouble^^